Packer Toni - Seeing Without Knowing

Packer Toni - Seeing Without Knowing - Toni Packer

As someone who feels frustrated after 10 years of Zen meditation practice (including daily meditation, participation in a sangha, koan work, and individual work with teachers), I found this 45-page bound pamphlet from 1983 helpful in seeing the projections I have made onto various “teachers.” I appreciate why Toni Packer left Rochester Zen Center to start what would become the Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry and Retreats. She had been deeply influenced by Krishnamurti’s inquiry method of teaching, and this pamphlet shows her personal accessibility in the section called “Correspondence with a workshop participant,” which reproduces some of the letters with a student over 8 months. This lovely little pamphlet encourages the reader in the process of inquiry and seeing, and it can be read in a sitting. Toni Packer died in August of 2013 at the age of 86.